Adjustment Board Member Gets Fed Up

December 2, 1986|By Vaughn Roche of The Sentinel Staff

KISSIMMEE — After seven years on the city's board of adjustment, Ron Grathwol said he had heard enough. It seemed city commissioners repeatedly were questioning the board's decisions to grant exemptions to building code requirements, he said. ''I just decided I didn't want to take it anymore; there had always been rumblings, but never like this,'' Grathwol said.

City Manager Richard Simmons agreed that the rumblings have grown louder. For several years, he said, the board of adjustment has been sympathetically approving variances to the city's building codes.

The city commission wants it stopped.

Simmons said commissioners plan to meet with the board in January to remind members that their power to grant exemptions is limited. He said exceptions may be made only in cases of ''hardship,'' such as when a strict ordinance might keep a property owner from using his land.

Simmons said the meeting should resolve misunderstandings and avert a possible court battle between the commission and the board. As a quasi- judicial body, the board cannot be overruled by the commission.

Its decisions can be challenged only in court.

''It's typical of boards of adjustment that, if you don't remind them from time to time, they become sympathetic with people and grant variances as a matter of routine,'' Simmons said.

Of Grathwol's recent resignation, Simmons said: ''It's a shame that anyone should take this personally.''

Grathwol said, ''They commissioners felt that we approved everything carte blanche, and yet they never attended our meetings or sat down with us to learn the details of why we approved variances.''

He estimates the board was approving 60 percent of the requests. But he said most approvals were for such slight variances as allowing porch screens or small fences to be erected in areas in which they are not permitted.

In many cases, Grathwol said, the board believed city ordinances were too strict.

Grathwol said he weathered the commission's criticism for seven years, but finally had enough when he read a newspaper article quoting Simmons' complaints. ''He and the commissioners could have sat down with us and told us in person. Instead, they got their dander up, and I had to learn of it all through the press.''